What makes good Costume Detail?

today we're talking about how to add details to your garb and i'm going to start by committing a sin we're thinking about it wrong details are a byproduct the real reason you clicked on this video is because you want to know how to make your garb more authentic [Music] greetings adventurers my name is kramer and hold on i will explain it's very easy to look at a world or a character design and think wow this this this character has so many details those details make it more authentic so in order to make my character authentic i must add details to it and i've had to give this a lot of thought while i was creating this video but i now believe this to be backwards it is rather that the character is very authentic and therefore we notice a lot of details the phrase add detail implies that it is a step that can come afterwards that you can design a character first and then put details on and i used to think that i used to think that adding details came as a later step just so that you could like personalize your garb but detail is a noun which just means a particular or a part which does nothing to help us identify what those details should actually be and technically speaking all of the parts of your garb are details then to say that something is detailed is similarly unhelpful because it just describes that something has details and if you use detail as a verb it simply means to add details to something so all of it is just way too broad so instead of asking the question how can i add details to my character which is honestly very vague we're going to ask the question how can i make my costume more authentic because to make a costume authentic means that it has to start at its inception from the very beginning of the design process all three of the primary definitions of authentic are what we are striving for and coincidentally why so many modern character designs on the silver screen seem to just feel a little flat something authentic is worthy of acceptance or belief as conforming to or based on fact something conforming to an original so as to reproduce essential features or something made or done the same way as an original a detail is just a part or an element a design on your vamp race is a detail but the van brace itself is also a detail it's all details but the ultimate goal is to make your garb look more realistic more lived-in more believable to take it from being a costume into being clothes not to just add details for the sake of details so first i'm going to tell you what advice i think you should ignore then i'm going to tell you what things i think you should do and then i'm going to show you what i do and we're going to try on a couple different costume elements here right here in the video and try to put a look together but first i have to take a moment to tell you about today's video's sponsor skillshare making videos for youtube has come with a really steep learning curve and there is a lot that goes into it from writing the scripts to doing the research to learning how the camera functions to then editing the footage that you've shot to color grading to sound design to lighting and you don't know what it is that you don't know until that problem rears its ugly head and that is something that i really appreciate about skillshare because a well-structured lesson with a good teacher will tell you what it is that you need to know and then explain that information to you so you can dedicate your time to actually learning rather than wasting your time researching what it is that you need to learn in the first place for example i just finished the course an introduction to filmmaking by david richie really great introductory course and it lays out all of the logistical stuff from pre and post production to marketing and i realized that i need to learn more about camera lenses and because of the huge range of lessons offered on skillshare it's very easy to find a course specifically about that skillshare takes away all of the guesswork and gives you control over your own learning process so that you can dedicate your very precious time to learning about things that interest you skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of inspiring classes for anyone who loves learning and wants to explore their creativity and learn new skills and that very accurately describes us so i'm really happy to be partnering with skillshare the first 1000 people who use my link down below are going to get a full month free on skillshare so you can explore any number of courses from filmmaking to creative writing to character design and illustrations and even some crafts like leatherworking so definitely check out skillshare and a super huge thank you to them for sponsoring this video one of the most common pieces of advice that i see for new people into the hobby whether that's larping or fantasy reenactment or even historical reenactment is that you should add details by picking things that are related to your backstory and then putting them onto your character like a trinket i'm going to take a slightly unorthodox approach don't do this don't think that you have to add elements of sentimental value to your costume in order to set yourself apart or make you look interesting it is not character development it is not world building and it is not authentic this advice frames it such that the addition of the detail is the most important thing it doesn't matter what the detail is it simply matters that you have it and remember this is advice that's generally given to new people into the hobby which means they're not going to have the experience to know what types of details to add but they are going to be tricked into thinking that just because they've added something that they have accomplished their task but remember that the goal of your garb is not to look interesting it is to tell a story about your character without you having to say anything otherwise you're just including elements simply so that people can ask you about them you might as well have a little sticker on your chest that says hello my name is barnabas ask me about my backstory say you are a character that has a staff you should be able to justify through your backstory why it is that you have the staff it shouldn't just be there for no reason and you might be able to explain that your master gave it to you with this dying breath as he said to you that you should go and fulfill your destiny and you said i'm not ready and he said that's how i know you are and now you carry that staff with you for the rest of your life to remind you of your master's teachings and that's all fine that's very good but the staff itself needs to be authentic in its design too it's not enough that you just have it what color is it how is it decorated is it even decorated was it decorated and then over many years lots of decorations have fallen off is the handle weather worn from decades and decades of use all of those things can be influenced by the history of your character they should be but i shouldn't have to know that backstory in order to appreciate the staff i should be able to look at the staff and see the story in the staff as a designer you should be able to explain all of the choices of your design and why they're there that as a storyteller you shouldn't have to personally i think you should let those sentimental story details about your character evolve organically within the story and be given to you by real actual people rather than you just trying to make them up because then you're just pretending and pretending isn't authentic now if we're talking about garb accents or flavor additions not in terms of taste but you know what i mean like colourpop's embroidery laces leather tooling all things like that should already be elements of the design they should be drawing from your history and the culture of your character and you need to already know what those are they can't really be manufactured and then added afterwards they have to be there from the start not everybody is going to have the experience necessary to do that and that's okay i can't make a video helping you design that because there's just too many variables i'd have to talk to you personally i'm also not a designer this is this is just my thoughts so instead i think it's much more helpful to focus on practical things we can do to increase authenticity and what i can do is show you what i do and encourage you to watch the making of for peter jackson's lord of the rings because it is an absolute master class in what follows from what and proper thought processes for design so now we know what to avoid how do you increase authenticity put on your garb and live in it learn the intricacies of how it functions how you move it and how you use each of the different pieces because that is all detail that cannot be manufactured or layered on afterwards and by knowing how everything functions you will be more authentic and you will be able to start making practical adjustments and additions and start removing things that you don't like because where you wear your pouches that is detail and all of the other things like dirt travel stains patches from repairs stuff like that all of that will just be added on naturally over the course of you wearing your garments as if they're actually clothes and they should be we'll get to that in a second but you will also start to notice how things deteriorate in what order they deteriorate and from that you can then make inferences so that you can start expediting that deterioration and weather your garments without having to get into the theory of knowing exactly all of the elements of the design though if you wanted to take a course on skillshare of that of course you could but if you just live in your clothes you don't have to worry about any of that because it will all come naturally the most common places for deterioration to occur are generally at your joints especially on your arms because you move them so much so your wrists your elbows and your shoulders you'll start to see wrinkles appearing you'll start to see discoloration from from light or from sweat stuff like that you can also run your clothes through the dryer a couple of times or just leave them out in the sun i'm not telling you to damage your your garments make sure that they're not going to shrink or tear or burn or anything like that but that is a technique that was used on the lord of the rings set in order to add years of weathering without having to actually spend years doing it in order to make sure that you actually enjoy wearing your garb and that it functions as intended is to make sure that you are choosing materials that are proven to work historically silk linen wool maybe some suedes some materials are going to patina and weather better than other ones are stay away from synthetic fabrics the human eye is very capable of identifying when there is synthetic fabrics it's like uncanny valley but for clothes and synthetic fabrics are going to go from looking spotlessly clean to downright dirty with zero in between or nuance you should also stay away from cotton because cotton absorbs moisture very quickly and then sheds it very very slowly it's not going to be comfortable try looking for materials that add some depth have some texture maybe a brocade or something that is embroidered but you don't want something that is either printed on or ironed on you want something that you can touch and that you can feel something that's real that will create shadows when the light hits it again stay away from cotton cotton is a very flat fabric it's going to wash out completely in the sun look very one-dimensional so now we're going to do a fun little experiment i'm wearing this just for the beginning of the video but i have a whole pile of stuff right there and we're going to start trying various pieces on the form that i'm going for the look that i want to create is i want you to look at my character and think that guy is a ranger from the lord of the rings and if i'm very lucky you'll think that could be a young aragorn but i know that i don't look like aragorn so i won't deign to hope for that but i can dream and then after i'm done showing off the various looks you can drop your thoughts in the comments below which one you think works the best and then that will influence what i start wearing on the channel especially as we start getting into the fall and then i'll make a dedicated video about that showing off all of the different details and by details i mean elements so this is obviously a very simple design to start with i've got a linen shirt on i've got a leather jerk in here the bottom is duck cloth and then i've got green pants and greenish brownish suede boots so what happens if i add my canvas i'm trying to design this so that it sort of evokes that aragorn feel he's got his long duster i'm using the gambeson but you will notice that it only has half sleeves um i'm honestly not sure that i think this works something about this something about this just isn't really working for me it doesn't really evoke that middle earth feel but i also designed it so they're the same length so i can wear the gambeson underneath the jerk and we'll see how that works i changed my shirt because i think maybe the the white and the black was clashing too much didn't really look middle-earth it looked i don't know too gothic or something i think the shirt helps a little bit i think this is a little better something still doesn't feel quite correct you know i think it's the collar i think it's the collar in the neckline um but the collar stands very tall and when i wear the gambeson underneath it doesn't have that sort of rugged wanderer type look to me this is very much this is very much a witcher style though let me know what you think i think the green shirt does help a lot the white the white it really wouldn't work but i think the collar is wrong something that i've noticed about myself i think it's because of the color of my hair it's very difficult for me to wear black because not only does a lot of it blend in um but it's i always i i i always end up looking like a vampire or a pirate too if i if i leave my shirt too open i always look like a pirate that might be down to the facial hair maybe it's time maybe it's time for a shave or something like that what do you guys think maybe if the gambeson was a different color i i just don't know see this is a fun experiment you can do if you have a decent amount of material to work with just change out one thing and see what new story you can tell i've got a black cardigan with a hood on it we're gonna try that next i don't know maybe we're getting closer i it's still too much black it's still too much black isn't it something about this it just doesn't say middle earth to me i'm gonna put bracers on adding these sort of breaks up the the coloration on the arm and i actually like these a lot these were i think these are handmade these were sent to me by friend of the channel i generally don't like fan braces at all but these are these are nice thick leather they feel very nice i think yeah i definitely think i definitely think the van braces is necessary in all iterations let's go ahead and try the hood now i look like an assassin's creed character this is another cardigan gray this time both of the cardigans are from wish and i just think that's funny because if i nail this it will prove that you can get stuff from wish and have it look good i know the people have been saying that the rings of power costumes look like they are from wish if i pull it off then it can work how you lace your garment is also a detail that you will work out simply by wearing your garments because it's probably difficult to see on the camera but i'm actually not lacing every single lace hole that i have i'm lacing every other one and that says something it either says that i'm lazy or that i didn't have enough string i like the coloration of this a lot better and i think just the shirt and the jerkin maybe isn't uh isn't enough doesn't add enough depth would also be kind of cold i think this coloration is a lot better it's got a good texture to it probably the camera's not picking it up but it's got a it's got a nice weave to it i think we're getting a lot closer to that middle earth ranger look so the affiliate rangers in peter jackson's lord of the rings had uh separate hoods that laced on over the top of their uh armor so something that i'm learning about myself is that because of the length of my hair i actually can't for lord of the rings look anyway get away with wearing hoods that have too much structure it's very built up here around the neck and uh the hood stands up a bit on the back so my hair bunches up and it really sort of beefs up my upper half and makes me look very top-heavy um this is much more of a game of thrones look i think than it is a lord of the rings look yeah it really is that really is that sort of low open neckline there's something very vulnerable about having an exposed sort of neck there's a there's an element of poise to it to having to have in the neck exposed there's there's that vulnerability for the character i really think that that is the way [Music] you know what it is i need gloves doesn't that make all the difference in the world there's something very there's something very primal about wanting to protect your hands and keep them warm there's something about wearing fingerless gloves that just says i am a person who wanders you know if i had if i had my fingers covered if i had like full leather gloves um man i wish i had some i i it would look too it would look too professional it would look soldierly look formal like the collar on on the on the gambeson i think the the fingerless gloves really sort of make it this is a wool cloak sort of a combination between a rawana cloak and a uh and a moroccan bernous i think but if i throw the if i throw the shoulders back there it wears just like a regular irregular cloak he really it really is that low neckline that makes that makes this feel a little bit more regal rather than uptight and closed off i really think this is the look i think this is what i was going for let me know what you think and the reason that i didn't um try on the cloak or the hood with absolutely every element is because when you identify that an element doesn't work you shouldn't rely on other elements to fix it the gamma sin i don't think worked so i don't think the gloves would have fixed the gambeson rather just find an element that works better than the gambeson and then the gloves can do their job so because i know people will ask actually here is what the gambeson looks like with the bracers and with the gloves on and also with the cloak and i'm doing this experiment to really hammer home that you don't need to have these trinkets of sentimental value added to your costume it doesn't really add very much at all in my opinion you can simplify it for yourself and make it much easier by just playing around with what you already have and then nailing the look nailing the form and that is what will make it authentic every part of your garb is a detail and all of them come together into one cohesive hole that should say something about your character without you having to say anything at all details are specificity if you have to explain why something is there in order for it to make sense then it wasn't specific enough i i wish there was an easier answer i i wish that it was as simple as me making a video top 10 things you should add in order to make a more detailed costume at a necklace that you say that your mother gave you but it really isn't that simple and it took me making this video in order to realize that there's really no such thing as adding detail there is only good design and authenticity and i can't necessarily teach you how to design your costume unless i talk to you and that you can't manufacture authenticity that's counter-intuitive so take the opportunity to have some fun go outside try things out see what works and doesn't work and the authenticity will come the details will come if you build it they will come and if you're looking for some tips on how it is that you can start to build your character's history so that you actually have something to play then you can check out this video but in the meantime i'd like to wish you good luck on your adventures

Channel: Living Anachronism

Views: 41,724

Keywords: medieval, fantasy medieval, fantasy, fantasy adventure, medieval fantasy, lord of the rings, lotr, the witcher, witcher, tolkien, reenactment, fantasy reenactment, larp, how to, rings of power, lotronprime, costume, costume design, lotr costume design, larp costume, medieval costume, costume detail, aragorn, aragorn costume, aragorn costume diy, aragorn cosplay

Id: V51LZmvMKrk

Length: 18min 57sec (1137 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 13 2022